


i will follow you into the dark

by xylodemon



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They learn their story in Augsburg, but it doesn't really change anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will follow you into the dark

They learn their story at Augsburg, the reason why their father led them into the forest that night, why he took the lantern and never returned. The truth should make things easier, shape their anger and resentment into something different, but they've lived with their abandonment too long, have let the hard years that followed settle beneath their skin like a splinter. There are still nights -- cold nights with listless stars and a heavy moon shrouded by fog -- when Gretel wakes screaming, when Hansel tastes sugar on the back of his tongue, feels it sticky on his lips and chin, gritty between his teeth. They still don't talk about it, and Hansel is glad; he's never seen the point in opening old wounds.

Gretel keeps their mother's book of witchcraft, reading it by a weak flare of candlelight in their tiny room at the inn, her head tilted to one side, her fingers long and slim against the yellowed, crumbling pages. Hansel doesn't know what she's looking for, except a connection to the parents they've both mourned and despised for more than half their lives; she lacks the patience for potions that brew over days and days or incantations said during a certain phase of the moon, and she's still uncertain about what she is, her eyes growing flinty and sharp when Muriel's wand sparks in her hand. Hansel hopes she'll continue to trust in their guns; his chest aches when he thinks of suspicious villagers learning her secret and lashing her to a stake, of their father choking to death as he watched their mother burn.

"It would never happen," he tells her, his mouth open against the curve of her cheek, his hand working into her hair, his fingers curling in where her braid has pulled loose at the nape of her neck. He sets his teeth to the soft skin below her ear, then drags his lips down the line of her jaw, tugging at the buttons of her nightshirt as he presses a kiss underneath her chin. "I wouldn't let it happen."

"I know," she says, smiling as the ancient bed creaks under their weight. Gretel likes to be on top, and Hansel likes having her there, watching her back arch and her breasts way as she twists her hips to meet his thrusts, but she lets him roll them over this time, laughing as she urges him to fuck her harder, her heel bruising into his thigh and her fingernails digging into his shoulders.

The first witch after Augsburg is far less powerful than Muriel, but she's incredibly old, mottled grey skin and greenish stubs for teeth, cautious and clever in the way survivors often become, and the forest has grown to accept her over the years, enough that it's willing to help her when she asks. Trees crack open across their path, and roots push through the dirt to writhe in the air like snakes; a small stream floods its banks with a roar like the ocean, and the humus slowly churns into a thick, reddish mud that squelches and pulls at their boots. Ben drives the weapons cart into a bear pit that yawns opens without warning, tumbling in after it, twisting his ankle and narrowly missing the heavy, wooden spikes, and Hansel and Gretel chase the witch down on their own, bringing her to ground while Edward is hauling Ben back up with a rope. 

It feels like the old days then, before they really learned the tricks of the trade, when they were still working mostly on instinct and nerve, had nothing but each other and a pair of hunting knives and a stolen gun that jammed nearly as often as it fired. They herd her toward the fringes of the forest, until she's cornered at the edge of a ravine, too far to jump and beyond the reach of her broom; she has watery pink eyes and lips the color of ash, and Hansel grits his teeth as Gretel tackles her with empty hands, as he chops off her ugly head with a rusty ax he finds rotting on the corpse of a tree stump.

He fucks Gretel while Ben and Edward are bathing their wounds in what's left of the stream, pushing her back against a tree not a foot from the witch's crumpled, cooling body, his blood still jittery and hot from the fight, his hand shaking as he works it past a tear in her bodice. Her hair is riotous, snapping in the wind where it isn't snagged and snarled in the bark, and she pulls him closer with each breath, her fingers twisted in his shirt and her bare leg hooked around his waist. He kisses her until they're both gasping and shuddering, and when Ben and Edward finally crest the rise she still has blood smeared at the hollow of her throat, a red stain the size and shape of Hansel's hand.

They hear rumors on the road as they move south, from merchants and vagrants and travelers, whispers of strange noises and missing children, of soured milk and frenzied livestock and fogs that roll in too fast and linger too long, stinking of mold and death and decay. The next village is Haundorf, miles to the east through dense woodland without any trails; they decide to start there, and Hansel traps a brace of rabbits for the trip while Ben plots their course on a map he stole from Mayor Englemann. 

"I might be a coven," Ben says excitedly, as he helps Gretel count their remaining bullets and bolts.

"A coven means practiced witches," she replies, checking the tiller on her favorite crossbow. "Old hands wouldn't bother upsetting the fucking goats."

Haundorf is bigger than Hansel expects, with a large tavern and a larger inn and a neat block of grass that passes for a town square, and he drinks a full pint of ale while standing at the bar, then pays extra for a room with a window and a decent bed. He watches the sun set in his shirtsleeves, the shutters open and his elbows resting on the sill; the horizon burns pink and gold behind the uneven line of chimneys and peaked rooftops, painting the cobblestone streets a deep, muddy brown, and when the wind turns he catches a faint whiff of the smell the villagers have been complaining about, something dark and rotten and cold. 

"Our girl is south of here," he says, as the floorboards sigh behind him.

"I know," Gretel says. She's wearing nothing but her nightshirt, the short hem curling against her legs with the wind, and she brushes her thumb over his jaw as she reaches past him to pull the shutters closed. "A boy was taken yesterday. I couldn't find his parents, but the sheriff said he was picking berries off the southern road when he disappeared."

"Our guns are nearly empty." 

"I sent Ben to the armorer with a sack of gold and a list. It's too dark to start tonight. We'll have to wait 'til tomorrow."

She is beautiful, her breasts a soft swell underneath her nightshirt, her hair loose and spilling wildly over her shoulders. He catches her by the waist, pulling her close enough to kiss a bright mark into the curve of her neck, then slides down to his knees to press his mouth to the hair curling between her legs, to slip his tongue into her cunt, licking and sucking until she's hissing his name, until her thighs shake and her knees buckle and her fingers knot into his hair.

"Come on," she says, breathless, her cheeks bright and pink as she pulls him up by his arm. "We finally have a bed big enough for two."

"If you insist," he says, snorting as she throws a pillow at his head.

Tomorrow they will kill a witch and save a little boy, but tonight it's just the two of them, the way it has been for close to twenty years.


End file.
